- Victor C. Bolles
How to Destroy the Republican Party
The Democratic Party appears to be doing everything it can possibly do to insure a red Republican tsunami in the 2022 midterm elections. Their wild spending spree, abetted by the Fed’s incredibly accommodative monetary policy, has launched inflation into the stratosphere. The excuse that such spending was necessary to combat the pandemic is no longer credible in the face of a surging economy and low unemployment in 2021 that is now deteriorating into a slowdown in growth (that the White House is desperately trying to convince everyone is not a recession), employable workers taking sabbaticals funded by transfer payments, non-transitory inflation and a rebellion by parents appalled at what their children are being taught in school.
In 2020, Democrats had leveraged distaste for a narcissistic demagogue of a president into a campaign promising a return to normalcy that resulted in a supposedly moderate presidential successor and a razor-thin majority in Congress. But trying to leverage a mandate of nothing more than getting rid of Donald Trump, the Democrats believed that they could change America permanently into a progressive paradise. A progressive paradise that nobody actually wants or voted for. The people are telling Democrats exactly that with off year elections going to moderate Republicans like Glenn Youngkin.
Instead of revising their strategy to be more in tune with what American voters actually want, Democrats are doubling down on their woke agenda, pushing highly partisan legislation through the Democrat House such as the For the People Act, that then crash and burn in the evenly divided Senate. Democrats insist that their failures are due to the fact that the American people don’t understand what they are trying to accomplish and that they need to change their messaging and not their agenda. Calling the American people too stupid to understand what’s good for them is not a good way to win elections. Besides, maybe it is the progressive Democrats that are too stupid to understand what the American people want.
Given this scenario, Republicans should be in a position to make major gains in the midterms. All the American people want is a return to some sense of normalcy so that they can get on with their lives, which is hard enough to do even in the best of times. Given the antipathy of voters to the progressive agenda demanded by the Democrats, it would take an idiot or a madman at the head of the Republican Party to foul up the 2022 elections. Enter Donald Trump.
Donald Trump never accepted the results of the 2020 presidential election and insisted that he won (“by a landslide”) and continues to so insist up to this day. Many failed candidates suffer from this form of self-deception. But Mr. Trump’s insistence that the elections were fraudulent and his effort to coerce Georgia officials to overturn the election in that state, interfered with two runoff elections that the Democrats won, allowing them to obtain a tie in the Senate, putting the fate of the entire nation into the hands of Vice President Kamala Harris as the tie breaker.
He then tried to block the transfer of power to President-elect Joe Biden by having hordes of MAGA supporters try to intimidate Vice President Mike Pence (in his role as President of the Senate) to reject the results of the state certified electors and overturn the acceptance of the election results and the transfer of power. His actions on that day were not only reprehensible, they were incomprehensible. Whether it was the dopey advice of the crackpots he surrounded himself with, or the voices in his own head, he put himself before country. He was willing to sacrifice America for his own ego.
After such a performance, one would think that a person would lie low or go into internal exile to hide from the shame. But no. Donald Trump, continuing to insist that the 2020 election was stolen, maintains his grip on the Republican Party. What’s more, he is trying to take charge of the Republican takeover of Congress by finding and endorsing candidates in the primaries, to run against Republicans that oppose him or voted to impeach him. The candidates he is endorsing need have only one qualification, undying loyalty to Donald Trump. No experience necessary. Loyalty to country secondary.
And he has been largely successful. Senate candidates Dr. Mehmet Oz, Herschel Walker and J.D. Vance have won their primaries although though they have no experience in government. Up and down the ballot, Trump-endorsed candidates are winning. Many of these candidates received donations from Democratic PACs, because the Democrats realize there is only one issue that can help them win. And that is Donald Trump. Oz, Walker and Vance are all trailing their Democratic opponents, even though these were previously Republican seats (except Georgia which was solidly Republican until Trump interfered).
With all these Trump loyalist candidates (maybe we should call them Trumpzis?), the ability of the Republicans to take control of the Senate is now in doubt. And the red tsunami expected in the House may turn out to be nothing more than a ripple. If the Trump-tainted Republicans can barely eke out a few gains against the highly unpopular Biden administration burdened by the highly unpopular leftist agenda of the Democratic Party how well do you think they will do in 2024 with Trump leading the ticket.
The Republican Party is turning into a Trump personality cult. The Trump endorsed candidates have only one thing in common, loyalty to Donald Trump. And loyalty to Donald Trump means signing on to all his conspiracy theories and delusions about stolen elections. It means solidarity with his other supporters like Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys. People will assume the Trump candidates follow QAnon and believe in child porn pizza parlors. And maybe they do. But would you vote for them?
Political parties in the United States are not known for being idealistic or principled. Mostly they’re just about raw political power and not about visions of peace and prosperity. The Democratic Party that is now the darling of African Americans and left-leaning progressives use to be the party of slavery and Jim Crow. All those Dixiecrats Joe Biden famously said he got along with so well were actually other Democrats. And the Republican Party that is now accused of supporting white supremacy was the party of Lincoln, emancipation, and civil rights in the South during Reconstruction. Funny, how people change, and perceptions change.
Unlike Europe, American politics is designed to be a two-party system. It wasn’t meant to be that way. The Founders envisioned a republic devoid of faction. The Constitution does not mention faction or political parties. But people, being what they are, quickly formed factions before the ink on the Constitution was dry. And the politicians in Washington, DC quickly made sure that the operations of government supported a two-party, and only a two-party, system. Alternative parties and third-party candidates don’t have a chance. The Libertarian candidate only managed slightly more than one percent of the vote in the 2020 election, and the Green Party candidate less than that. Third party candidates rarely do more than screw up the results between the major parties, such as when H. Ross Perot gained 18.9% of the popular vote in 1992.
We can’t believe anything the politicians of the two political parties say. They only say the things that will advance their parties chances in the next election. They bend the truth and lie when they think they won’t get caught. Worse, we can’t believe anything the news outlets say because they only repeat the talking points of their favored political party. You just need to look at the assertions of the politicians and the presentations by the news outlets regarding the so-called Inflation Reduction Act. Even the names of legislation attempts to sway public opinion.
But just like the election of Glenn Youngkin heralded a gut reaction to the woke agenda of the left progressives in Virginia school boards and in the state government in Richmond, the Kansas vote on changing the state constitution to allow greater restrictions on abortions went down in defeat. So, a blue Virginia elected a red governor and a red Kansas supported abortion rights. The traditional parties no longer represent the American people.
So, it will not be the Democrats that destroy the Republican party as much as they would like to. It will be Donald Trump and his acolytes of the new religion that will destroy whatever the Republican Party stood for. Of course, the Democrats also have their own new religion and their own acolytes as well. Maybe both parties will get a wake up call at election time.
